Aspen Avionics unveils certified glass panel PFD for VFR pilots

Aspen Avionics, manufacturer of the Evolution Flight Display system, has unveiled its first certified glass panel PFD built specifically for VFR pilots. The Aspen EFD1000 VFR PFD combines situational awareness and safety into a single-flat panel liquid crystal display that can be upgraded to a fully IFR-capable Evolution Pro PFD, company officials said.

“Aspen has done a great amount of market research and our findings were that VFR pilots, and IFR pilots that are not current, represent over 50% of the flying population. This is a segment of the flying public that, at best, has been underserved,” said John Uczekaj, president and CEO, Aspen Avionics.

Priced at $4,995, the EFD1000 VFR PFD will meet the needs of the VFR pilot, as well as meet their future IFR rating goals through a software upgrade, according to company officials.

Aspen’s goal is to allow the pilot to purchase the VFR unit and, when they are ready, purchase the software upgrade. The upgrade, priced at $4,690, upgrades the VFR PFD to Aspen’s EFD1000 Pro PFD and enables the following functions:

About General Aviation News Staff

Comments

I’d love to have glass in my plane. But as has been stated, the cost for a VFR only PFD makes it prohibitive. Even at half the price, it provides little (if any) additional information for the pilot when installed. This may be a viable option for an owner to replace inop or outdated gauges, but there are way to do this more efficiently. Saying their “Target Market” is the “GA community” casts a very wide net, but this product is obviously going to be marketed to the VFR pilot that flys for fun. $5,000 can go a very long way towards time in the air.

THE DIGITS, THE FONTS; ALL ARE WAY TOO TINY. I NEED TO SEE ALL THE AVAILABLE INFORMATION “RIGHT NOW”, BIG, BOLD WITHOUT BENDING FORWARD, SQUINTING, OR WEARING GLASSES. THE SAME IS TRUE WITH GRAND RAPIDS AVIONICS AND ESPECIALLY DYNON SKYVIEW.

Very nice unit at a good price for “glass”. The target market would, it seems, have a functional panel already as they state,”represent over 50% of the flying population”,note FLYING. That noted, it means that the $4995 dollars that the base unit costs could be spent on fuel. With 100LL averaging $6.00/gal. that is about 832.5 gallons. With a 150 hp. aircraft using about 8.5 gal./hr in cruise close to 100 hours of flight time. The reported national average is 40-50 hours per year, so two years of fuel is the cost of this unit. If you want one buy it, but please, don’t complain about not being able to afford to use your aircraft if you spent on this to replace functioning gauges rather than buying fuel.

I’ve been using the IFR system for a few weeks now and it’s great (it’s in our club aircraft so it wasn’t my decision). There are only a few drawbacks to the system that I could see being a problem. First, it’s pretty expensive for the crowd it’s going to attract. This system is obviously geared toward those old Cessna and Piper air-frames to replace two instruments at a time. Generally, those who enjoy their aircraft are fine with those steam gauges and may find it not worth replacing them for what amounts to two instruments at that price. The customization that comes with this system only comes if two or more are used in tandem, mostly because you can’t switch from DG to the ADS-B overlay without losing any DG in the cockpit! However, this is just my opinion, and my overall feeling is that it looks cool, but it doesn’t necessarily ADD anything to the cockpit environment.